Description
Roadhouse USA location:
1979 Kramer USA DMZ 1000 Aluminum Neck Guitar, natural finish.
Excellent figuring to the wood, just beautiful all the way around.
Neck is awesome and it plays great.
Appears to be all original except for 1 replaced pickup and even comes in the period correct Kramer hard case.
I love these aluminum neck Kramers. They are definitely their own animal and each one is cool in its own way and representative of a bygone era.
They are getting harder and harder to come by so if you have been thinking of one, grab it while you can.
From Vintage Kramer:
“The Kramer aluminum neck era ran from 1976 to 1985 and was the legacy of the company before switching over to the more popular wood neck models uring the 80s. The first production batch of Kramers were introduced in November 1976. All of these early Kramers featured a “forked” aluminum headstock and aluminum “skeletal” neck (the Dukes had no headstock). These necks, designed for sustain, contained slots that ran the length of the neck for holding the wood fills in place. (See diagram) The idea of the wood inlays were to reduce the coldness feel of aluminum. Usually but not always, the wood neck fills were the same type and color as the body. The Ebonol fretboard contained large Phil Petillo designed “center-touch” frets, a zero nut and aluminum dot inlays. The higher up models had the mother of pearl “crown” shaped inlays. Scale lengths were 25″. Tuners were Schallers. They were manufactured at the Kaiser Aluminum plant on East Avenue in Erie, Pennsylvania. The necks were attached to the body by two bolts and the bolts were covered by an oval shaped aluminum plate. Control cavity covers were also aluminum. Some bass models were available fretless as well as half fretted/half fretless also.
In 1979, the DMZ series appeared. The DMZ name, based on it’s use of DiMarzio pickups contained several models; 4 guitars and 3 basses. Also at this time, Kramer began using a roller-type nut instead of the older type to reduce friction and tension.
The DMZ 1000 featured a heavy maple body in black or natural with 2 DiMarzio Distortion hum pickups and a Badass bridge. The 1000 also had the slimmer body and horns like DMZ 5000 model bass. Controls were 2 vol, 2 tone and 3 way switch.”
